Maker Studios exec: 'TV will be dead in 10 years'

"In 10 years from now, I doubt that anyone under 50 will be watching linear TV."

That prediction comes from Rene Rechtman, the president of international at the Disney-owned multichannel network Maker Studios, the largest content network on YouTube, attracting more than 11 billion video views every month.

Of course, it would be in Rechtman's interest to say this: His business is built on talent like gamer PewDiePie and channels like Epic Rap Battles of History, which have become huge successes without needing traditional TV to build their audiences.

But with 650 million subscribers (mostly millennials, generally defined as those between the ages of 18 to 34), Rechtman has a good data set to refer to when making predictions about what media will look like over the next decade.

Business Insider UK sat down with him after his appearance at the Financial Times' FT Digital Media conference in London to ask whether advertisers aligned with his view that viewing habits would soon move completely away from traditional scheduled live TV.

Rechtman then delivered his startling prediction. It seems like a long way off to make that kind of guess, but Rechtman is adamant that in 10 years, the TV we know now will be very, very different.

He said: "From a major demographic point of view, the tipping point has been reached. I mean, there's no way back, in my opinion. It's like fighting up against the stream ... OK, TV as we know it will not die tomorrow, but 10 years from now? I doubt anyone under 50 will be watching linear TV."

Instead Rechtman thinks people will be watching TV-like content in three different ways: advertising-funded video-on-demand on platforms such as YouTube, subscription video-on-demand on services such as Netflix, and through micropayments, if a viewer wants to pay to watch a particular series.

"It might still be on TV, but nonlinear," Rechtman said. "It's a great experience having a bloody big screen to watch what you want, whenever you want."

He gave the example of trying to make his own children watch David Attenborough's wildlife series. His kids love science, but Rechtman says they couldn't sit through a 50-minute show. Instead they looked up the exciting bits of the program (the volcano erupting or the lion eating its prey) by searching for the name of the series on YouTube and finding 20-second clips instead.

Prime time will still exist online

PewDiePie is one of Maker Studios' biggest success stories.PewDiePie/YouTube With the avalanche of content to choose from online, there still might be some importance in the scheduling that TV networks do so well: We're programmed to know that a show airing at 10 p.m. is "prime time" and probably worth watching versus a show that is airing during the middle of a workday.

Rechtman argues that with the new era with TV, scheduling will be no different. In fact, it is already occurring now with Maker Studios' YouTube subscriber base. Some 60% of the social engagement on its channels happens within 48 hours after a video is uploaded, Rechtman said.

He added: "I think scheduling and curation will be even more important going forward. We already use data for scheduling: We know not to upload a gaming video on a Wednesday because nobody will watch it because that's when all the new versions of games are being uploaded ... we recommend lifestyle content to be uploaded on a Monday and Friday."

Advertisers want a captive audience ready to consume content that they are actively choosing to watch as well an audience that goes on to share that experience with their friends, Rechtman said.

He explained: "I can see [subscribers] go on forums and start sharing what they have just experienced — that's the new water-cooler topic — so this is happening in a different way and different scale than ever seen before."

Without more data from Rechtman on the migration from linear TV to on-demand content (or, with some younger individuals, skipping over linear TV altogether) it's difficult to quantify whether his "10 years" until the obliteration of TV for under-50s is likely.

Data from outside Maker Studios, however, adds weight to Rechtman's theory, showing the rise of on-demand streaming services and that people under age 34 are watching less scheduled TV programs than their older counterparts.

This chart from BTIG Research shows how Netflix is steadily catching up with the big TV networks in terms of viewing hours. If Netflix were a domestic network, it could be at least the second biggest in 2015 (the year isn't over yet, so the rank is still just an estimate.)

And there's a big difference in the number of millennials who timeshift their viewing versus the total in the US too.

eMarketer

Millennials are watching 40 minutes less traditional TV every day than they were two years ago.

BI Intelligence

To be clear, TV isn't going anywhere anytime soon. The companies that own TV networks — Viacom, NBCUniversal, CBS, and ABC (a division of the Walt Disney Company) to name a few — have multibillion-dollar market caps and have diversified themselves through digital, licensing, events, and so on to build viable safety nets to protect their businesses against the threat of falling TV ratings.

Americans watch about five hours of linear TV a day, according to Nielsen, while the average Brit watches about four hours of TV a day, according to BARB. There is still a long way to go before that reaches zero. A heap of people above 35 years old still watch a lot of linear TV, and tentpole events like the Super Bowl and the Oscars will still draw huge live TV audiences.

But a shift is definitely happening. As Rechtman predicts, in 10 years, the TV landscape could look very different indeed.